near term extinction :

11 Jan 2014 11:00:52am

'Democracy', in any meaningful form, cannot co-exist with capitalism. In capitalist economies such as ours you inevitably end up with a plutocracy, with kleptocratic features and morally a 'kakistocracy'. Money power decides everything. Politicians are bought and sold by 'contributions' and policy follows. The population is ruthlessly brainwashed by a MSM indoctrination system that is entirely Rightwing and almost entirely propagandistic. Voters get the 'privilege' every three or more years of voting for one or other near identical Rightwing parties, both owned body and..., whatever, by the rich. Nearly 50% see their votes immediately rendered worthless because they 'lost'. In some systems, first past the post makes this even more marked. Gerrymandering, malapportionment and voter disenfranchisement are features of many systems. And in recent years 'democracy' has been subverted around the world by interference from the US Empire in elections, always favouring the most Rightwing parties with money and endless Western MSM propaganda lies. Not to forget the direct overthrow of democracies as in Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Honduras, Greece etc. The election campaigns are themselves farragoes of bribery, character assassination, appeals to fear, hatred and paranoia and outright lying. Post-election periods are strewn with the revelation of lies, deliberate misrepresentation and (not so) secret agendas. And you end up with suicidal regimes like our current one, or that of Harper in Canada, or Cameron in the UK, or Howard, Bush etc, who absolutely deny anthropogenic climate destabilisation (the plethora of other ecological crises is simply ignored)set out to destroy renewable energy and mine every ounce of fossil fuels, thereby even more emphatically ensuring that our children will not live to see old age. Well done, demo-crazy!!!

near term extinction :

11 Jan 2014 6:57:06pm

I forgot to mention the fact that between elections the plebs have no say whatsoever in the conduct of the state, are subject to numerous laws, many insane and unjust, have the so-called 'justice' system denied them in many cases due to lack of funds, see public provision deliberately neglected, find their patrimony of public institutions progressively 'privatised' to benefit the rich parasite caste, see their organs of self-representation like unions constantly slandered, vilified and attacked and find their living standards under constant attack by neo-liberalism, with the situation in the UK and USA pointing the way, unambiguously, to our future. Particular groups targeted by the Right for hate campaigns, like the indigenous, Moslems, environmentalists, suffer even greater detriments, many worsening year after year. Yeah, demo-crazy, is a roaring success, for the very, very, few.

near term extinction :

12 Jan 2014 5:41:28pm

And there I go again, forgeting to mention the great Aussie 'demos' that makes 'demo-crazy' so effing marvelous. I mean, what could be better than the principle of equality of voting power (forgeting with true Aussie amnesiophilia, for a second, the gerrymandering etc that makes the concept a sick joke)? After all, the equivalence of the stupid with the intelligent, the ignorant with the knowledgeable, the cruel with the compassionate, the vicious with the peaceful, the greedy with the generous, the racist, the xenophobe, the misogynist, the homophobe, the bigot and the rest of the Right's overflowing kennel of the dog-whistled with their opposites and near opposites, is a holy tenet of our polity. That it has, unfailingly for at least 20 years, produced regimes of utter and growing perfidiousness, mendacity, cruelty and pig-headed stupidity is, in my opinion, 'demo-crazy's' greatest triumph.

near term extinction :

12 Jan 2014 10:48:58pm

I was contemplating the sheer wonderfulness of the great Austrayan electorate (where, by definition, 50% are below median intelligence)tonight, as I watched a tiny knot of cranky nong-nongs demanding the end of marine reserves in South Australia. They must be over the moon that a like 'mind' in Tony Abbott is PM, and has promised to destroy the Federal marine reserve system proposed by Labor, as well as every other environmental protection in this country. After all, all that is Green is really Red, as that Holy Book, 'The Fundament', tells us day after hate-filled day. These happy omnicidaires were actually just targeting the reserve near Port Wakefield, but, felicitously, the State 'Liberals', not to be outdone when environmental rapine is in the offing, have promised to reverse that state marine reserve system. After all, it is a tenet of the religion of carefree greed and boundless self-entitlement to demand that Nature simply keep coughing up the goodies, no matter how greatly desecrated and debased she becomes. Tragically, the magic thinkers, Dunning-Krugerites one and all, who, naturally know more about marine science than the scientists, disbelieve that reserves become sanctuaries for fish, allowing them to breed up and spread out, to the vast areas left open for fishing. That's 'water-melon' talk, too complex and arcane for them to get their little minds around. Giving vent to their innate paranoia, aping their climate change denialist confreres, they reject the science as 'faked', and had dragged some poor kids along to hold banners saying so. With the below median intelligence 50% a rich source of votes for the Right, we can expect the ecological collapse to be very rapid, as the demands to kill the last white pointer, mine the last ton of coal, log the last old growth forest, strangle the last leadbetter's possum and drill the Barrier Reef for lovely loot that might trickle my way, resound across the land. Like a great big, flat, dry, over-heated Jonestown.

GidonPolya :

11 Jan 2014 2:22:30pm

Entertaining segment that nevertheless calls for critical comment. Thus basically the Eureka Stockade was about money. Chinese miners were variously subject to violence, pogroms, Chinaman hunts, murder, and deportation (see Humphrey McQueen's "A New Britannia"). Indigenous Australians weren't even able to vote until after the 1967 Referendum and the Whitlam Labor 1975 Racial Discrimination Act (grossly violated by the Coalition-Labor Lib-Labs in the disgraceful NT Intervention). Australia has become a Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy in which Big Money buys people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality and political power. Thus the largely foreign-owned Mining Industry only had to spend a mere $23 million in advertising to secure the removal of the very popularly elected Labor PM Kevin Rudd in the 24 June 2010 US approved, Mining Company-backed, pro-Zionist-led Coup (for the Awful Truth not reported by Mainstream media Google "pro-Zionist-led Coup" and read outstanding anti-racist Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein's analysis "Does the Zionist Lobby have blood on its hands in Australia"?") .

near term extinction :

13 Jan 2014 7:05:09am

Facts, old boy, mere facts. On the other hand the Right and their shock troops from the bottom 50% of the bell curve of distribution of intelligence have Belief. And the High Priests of Godzone religion, Aspiroaussiemateness, human paladins like Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Piers Ackerman, Tim Blair, Miraculous Miranda Devine et al, in their teeming scores, only have to tell them that scientists are secret Commos and that one day they'll all be rich, just like all those Brobdingnagian Businessmen that we all admire so very, very, much. Just so long as they shut up, vote for the Liberals and obey, and that they must not, under any circumstances, think for themselves, the supreme Sin in Aussietopia. And beware the Devil, Bob Brown, and his water-melon minions, envious types who threaten our 'Precious', our beloved McMansions, 4WDs, Jetskis, air-con and plasma TVs. If we all just shut our eyes, turn up the air-conditioning, hold hands and chant 'Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi1' in the approved manner then all will be well.

Gederts Skerstens :

Hard to find better representatives of Democracy than the Eureka miners.Independent, enterprising free men who battled for freedom, not the suppression of enemies or some fantastic paradise.

Timely because the idea of Democracy is now being challenged in what was to have been the last act in the Gramsci opera; after the institutions of a free society are wrecked, promote an obvious alternative.

Won't work. Thanks to technology, Lying, the main tool of the wreckers, can't be effective anymore.Whatever shortcomings are seen in Democracies is due to insufficient democracy. Again, the Swiss model of referendums as required sets the standard; ask what most of us want and you have a society with the least conflict and antagonism ever devised.

A few more broadcasts like this and I'll lobby to have the ABC partially retained.

near term extinction :

14 Jan 2014 2:52:41pm

What a strange sensation. I partially agree with you.'Democracy' must be accompanied by absolute egalitarianism, and the absence of exploitation of others. In that case it could exist, at the community, workplace and 'civil society' level. That, of course, means in the complete absence of capitalism or any other misanthropic system of organised exploitation and parasitism, relying, as it does, everywhere and always, on the promotion of all the features of the psychopath, ie greed, egomania, narcissistic self-regard, unscrupulousness, indifference to the fate others and ready resort to violence to get one's way. Moreover, capitalism is essentially omnicidal, being based, for a number of reasons, on endless economic growth on a finite planet, the ecological consequences of which, long foretold, are about to render our 'civilization' non-viable, then non-existent. The Right, a quaint 18th century French euphemism for the morally insane, intellectually insufficient and violently aggressive fraction of humanity, have always created great suffering and destruction, but they have at last, with the psychotic fanaticism of their ecological denialism, finally found the means by which to make their destructiveness final and inescapable. Perhaps it is the 'Death Instinct' running amok. Quite an achievement for the self-described Homo sapiens-to choose universal death for our species over life. But, as you chaps always did say, 'Better dead than Red'. We should have listened more closely.

Pat Ross :

01 Feb 2014 1:34:00am

If the money supply available to all is somewhat fixed, apportioning it so that only a few receive the majority (or all) of it, it is common sense that those few are the ones who reserve for themselves opportunities that can be purchased (including resources).

The creation of money in that scheme inflates the cost of money to all, and cannot help equalize the money distribution. Borrowing for governments then become the only option for keeping some money available to all, and to keep money flowing, and as taxes to spend.

If the money supply was a large pizza, those who get the largest pieces eat first, leaving scraps for others. Antitrust was created to prevent that problem, and to prevent the few from taking, and hoarding the money supply, and inventing methods of not paying taxes (like nonprofits) so that government has only borrowed money to distribute as taxes, increasing the debt for all - except those who carve out their wealth to exempt it from taxes.

Little is said about this potential to siphon up all money, leaving none for the rest of society to operate on. This is a historic method of how kings are made, and how peons are borne.

Gederts Skerstens :

03 Feb 2014 5:03:23pm

Get it clear:Any added value to the world comes from effort, enterprise and risk-taking. Plant the Olive trees there or don't.You didn't plant and the other guy took the risk and got rich? Good for him and screw your victim-whining.